"Perhaps not, but I've heard the name Aoire before, in some of the tales my mam used to tell me." He seemed as though he were about to say more and Jenna looked away from the falls toward him, but Mac Ard came striding up, and O'Deoradhain went silent at the tiarna's approach.
"I have our lunch unpacked," Mac Ard said. "We could bring it out here, and eat while watching the scenery."
"That sounds lovely," Maeve said. "Excuse me. We'll go help Padraic. Jenna?"
"Coming, Mam." She turned away from the falls, catching O'Deoradhain's gaze as she did so. "What is it you want?" she asked him, as her mam walked away.
O'Deoradhain shrugged. "Probably the same thing you want. Maybe the same thing you've already found." He nodded to her and smiled.
She grimaced sourly in return, and followed her mother.
Chapter 12: The Lady of the Falls
THEY finished their lunch, and lay in the soft grass under a surprisingly warm sun. Jenna’s arm was starting to throb again with pain, and she stood up. "I’ll be right back," she said. "I’d like to take a walk."
"I’ll go with you," O’Deoradhain offered, and Jenna shook her head.
"No," she said firmly. "I’d prefer to go alone. Mam, do you mind?"
"Go on," Maeve told her. "Don’t be long."
"I won’t be." Jenna walked away north, around the curve of the cliffs toward the falls. As she approached, the clamor of the cascading water grew steadily louder, until it drowned any other sound in white noise. Greenery hung over the edge of the ravine so that it was difficult to tell where the ground ended, and the mist dusted Jenna’s hair and clothes with sparkling droplets. She moved as close to the edge as she dared. Foaming water rushed past below her, spilling down to the lough. With the touch of the mist, she thought she heard faint voices, as if hidden in the roar of the falls was a distant, whispering conversation.
At the same time, her right arm began to feel cold and heavy under the bandages, and the cloch na thintri snuggled next to her skin flared into bitter ice. Jenna stopped, rubbing at her arm and flexing her suddenly stiff fingers, moaning slightly at the renewed pain. She started to turn back, thinking that she would fix herself more of the nasty-tasting anduilleaf, but stopped, blinking against the mist. There, just ahead of her, was a break in the greenery, a narrow trail leading down toward the Duan right where it plunged over the cliff edge. She wondered how she could have missed seeing it before.
Follow. . she thought she heard the water-voices say. Follow…
She took a tentative step forward, steadying herself against the bushes to either side. The path
was steep and ill-defined, the grass underfoot slick and only slightly shorter than anywhere else, as if the trail were nearly forgotten. Once she slipped and fell several feet before she could stop herself. She almost turned back then, but just below, the path seemed to level out, curving enticingly behind a screen of scrub hawthorns. Follow. . The voices were louder now, almost audible.
She followed.
Around the hawthorns, she found herself on a ledge below the lip of the falls. Water thundered in front of her, foaming and snarling as it thrashed its way over black, mossy rocks. The ledge continued around, cutting underneath the overhanging rocks at the top of the waterfall and disappearing into darkness behind the water.
Follow. . Her arm ached, the stone burned her skin with cold. Her hair and clothes, soaked by the mists, clung to her face and body. She should go back, she knew. This was insanity-one slip, and her body would be broken on the rocks a hundred feet below.
Follow. .
But there were handholds along the cliff wall, looking as if they'd been deliberately cut, and though the ledge was crumbling at the edges, the flags appeared to have once been laid by someone's hands. She took a step, then another, clinging to the dripping wall as the water pounded a few feet in front of her.
Then she was behind the falls, and the ledge opened up. Jenna gasped in wonder. She was looking through the shimmering veil of water, and the falls caught the sunlight and shattered it, sending light dancing all around her. The air was cool and refreshing; the sound of the falls was muffled here, a constant low grumbling that seemed to emanate from the earth itself. The rock underfoot trembled with the sound. As her eyes grew accustomed to the twilight behind the falling water, Jenna saw that the ledge on which she stood opened up behind her, sloping down and into the cliff walclass="underline" a small, hidden cave. Something gleamed well back in the recess, and Jenna moved toward it, squinting into the dimness.
And she stopped, holding her breath. In a stony niche carved from the living rock of the cliff, a
skeleton lay, its empty-socketed eyes staring at Jenna. The body had once been richly dressed-a woman, adorned with the remnants of brocaded green silk, with glistening threads of silver and gold embroidered along the edging. The arms were laid carefully along her sides, and under her head was a pillow, the stuffing spilling out from rotting blue cloth, a few strands of golden hair curling below the skull.
Rings hung loose on the bones of her fingers; jeweled earrings had fallen to the stone alongside the skull.
You look on the remains of Ellis MacGairbhith of Inish Thuaidh, and I was once the Holder of Lamh Shabhala, as you are now. .
The voice was as liquid as the falls, and it sounded inside her head. Jenna stepped back, her hands to her mouth, until she felt the roar of the water at her back. "No," she said aloud. "Be quiet. I don’t hear you."
A laugh answered her. The skeleton stared. Take one of my rings, the voice said. Place it on your own finger. .
"No. I can’t."
You must. . The voice was a bare whisper, fading into wind and the falls’ louder voice. For a moment, Jenna thought it had gone entirely, then it returned, a husk--please. . one of the rings. .
Her hand trembling, Jenna stepped toward the body again and reached out to the hands crossed over the breast. She touched the nearest ring, gasping, then pulled back as the golden band wobbled on the bones. Taking a breath, she reached out again, and this time pulled the ring from the unresisting hand. She held it in her fingers, turning it: the ring was heavy gold, inset with small emerald stones, filigreed and decorated with knotted rope patterns-an uncommon piece of jewelry, crafted by a mas-ter. The ring of someone who was once wealthy or well-rewarded.
She put the ring on her own finger.
At first nothing changed. Then Jenna realized that the hollow seemed brighter, that she could see as if it were full day. A bright fog filled the recess and the sound of the falls receded and died to nothing.
A woman, clad in the green silk that the skeleton had worn, stepped through the mist toward Jenna.
Her hair was long and golden-red like bright, burnished copper, and her skin was fair. Her eyes were summer blue, and she smiled as she came forward, her hands held out to Jenna. The sleeves left her arms bare, and Jenna saw that her right hand was scarred and marked to the elbow with swirling patterns, patterns that matched those on Jenna's own hand and arm.
On one of her fingers sat the same ring Jenna wore.
"Eilis," Jenna breathed, and the woman laughed. Aye," she said. "That was once my name. So you're the new Holder, and so young to be a First. That's a pity." Her hand touched Jenna's, and with the touch, Jenna felt a touch in her head as well, as if somehow Eilis were prowling in her thoughts. "Ah.
Jenna, is it? And you've met Riata."
Jenna nodded. "How. .?" she began.
"You are the Holder," Eilis said again. "This is just one of the gifts and dangers that Lamh Shabhala bestows: the Holders before you-we who held Lamh Shabhala while it was awake and perhaps even some of those who held it while it slept-live within the stone also." Jenna remembered the red-haired man she'd glimpsed when she first picked up the stone. Had he been a Holder, once? "At least," Eilis continued, "some shade of us does. Come to where a Holder's body rests, or touch something that was once theirs, and they can speak with you if you will it. They will also know what is in your mind, if you allow it to be open. Tell me, when you met Riata, did he give you a token?"